I know right? Too much interval training is bad for you? Shocking! 
And perhaps this is better suited for the unpopular opinions thread… but I really hate the acronym “HIIT.”
In the study they have opted for a protocol that surly would put their subjects in a state of excessive fatigue and probably overtraining. The exact protocol is not the the important part in the study. What is important is what happens to an athlete who is severely fatigued. This state of fatigue can occur during any demanding training, even during sweet spot.
Isn’t the biggest problem with this study that there isn’t sufficient “recovery”.
Perhaps the supercompensation occurs two, or six weeks later?
Doing three HIIT sessions in the recovery seems unideal lol.
In other words, does this study conclude that a high load “block”, be it one week before a trip, or a three week planned VO2 block, have a detrimental long term impact? Or just that to only train via (very) high intensity all the time is asking for trouble?
Sounds pretty tenuous to me but okay, as long as you are fine that this has absolutely no relevance whatsoever to any particular training plan.
As a study of nonfunctional overreaching it’s great.
It’s using HIIT to create excessive training load in order study nonfunctional overreaching, imo.
Lack of recovery isn’t a problem with, it’s kind of the point of, the study - and that they found the subjects were worse off even after the recovery period.
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Yeah I think you’ve got it. That’s why they were trying for, though. I mean, they were trying to induce overtraining. Ha! Like Little Albert, Milgram Conformity, and Robbers Cave Exp’t…these are the type of fun experiments that those stodgy old ethics committees one day say are ‘unethical’. Pfft.
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